Transcription
for joining us here for the news at Six. I'm Keisha Grant and I'm Mike Hydeck.
$10,000. That is how much was allegedly taken from a confidential informant program between November and December of 2025. That's according to Mayor Justin Elicker. Now that program is on hold. NBC Connecticut's Kyle Jones has more on what we're learning today. She joins us live in New Haven with the update. Kyle.
Yeah, Keisha and Mike. So earlier today, that update came at another surprise press conference on this topic. And that's where Mayor Elicker and now Acting Chief David Zanelli, they offered more details on what happened today.
Mayor Justin Elicker shed light on some of the known transactions of the fund used to pay confidential informants. In 2025, funds were regularly withdrawn from the account each month in $5,000 increments by Chief Jacobsen. But the last two transactions were flagged by someone in the department as being out of the norm and told the assistant chiefs. The only exceptions were in November and December of this year, when in each month, instead of one $5,000 withdrawal, there were two $5,000 withdrawals made in each month, a total of $10,000 extra dollars that is now under investigation.
In this meeting, the chief told the assistant chiefs that the amount that was taken was $10,000. I'd like to make clear, I want to make clear we do not know how much money was taken and whether the chief was truthful here. This is all preliminary information.
Assistant Chief Bertram Etienne and David Zanelli each say that they asked Jacobson for access several times to the account. He would be the sole holder of the money, and what he would say to us is commonly that he was doing that to protect us from any kind of liability. Zanelli said.
Today he was approaching his one year mark in his role over investigations, and was planning to gain access to the account for a required annual audit. We can't audit what we don't have, and that's one of the things that we want to remind everybody. And the other thing is that when he maintained these files from being assistant chief of investigations in 2019, this team had no reason to question his integrity until recently, when the concerns were brought by the members of the police department. And so that's the latest today. And there's still so much to unpack from what happened in that news conference and the ongoing investigation.
So right now, what happened is under investigation by the Connecticut State Police, with oversight from the New Britain State's attorney, to avoid any conflict of interest. And the city is hiring an outside firm to investigate the rules and regulations and protocols around the money and to see what needs to be changed. They'll be working with the police commissioners on that. And so they did say today that crime has been down in part to a lot of the work that the police department have done. Some credit to the confidential informant program. And so right now they're putting that program on hold to make sure that the protocols are in place before they can continue. But they did say that they are committed to keeping the identities of the people in this program confidential. They also said that Jacobson was beloved and that all of this is coming as such a shock and surprise, and so many are really just bewildered and asking why this happened. No motive.